Draft II. Third Image: Johannes — Mary

JOHANNES:
The duality of life weighs heavily on my soul.
Since the days
When the gates of the supernatural realm
Opened to me,
Ever-new creative powers
Arising within me,
I feel the full power of the word:
I have found myself.
But this power of grace
Becomes powerless when I turn to you,
To whom I owe my transformation,
My gaze.
I see how a consuming element
Gnaws at your soul.
You do not speak of it,
But I see it and I feel
How it grows more powerful with each passing day.
And if you want me not to lose
What I have achieved, you must trust me,
Like the tree that unfolds magnificently,
Allowed to live in leaves and blossoms,
But which is gradually
Robbed of the earth from which
Its roots grow,
So feels my soul,
For the power of my life's roots
Rests entirely in your soul.
I need your words
And the gentle glow of your gaze,
If I am to unfold
What has been given to me as a gift of the spirit.
But I must see
How your words flow ever more rarely
From your lips,
Giving fire to my soul,
And the sparkle in your eyes fades
More and more with each passing day.
I do not want to be merely a recipient
Of the great soul before me,
I want to share its fate.
So speak to me, O demon
Who so terribly extinguishes the lights
That always revealed themselves from within you.

MARIA:
Comrade of my life,
The time seems to have come
When I may speak to you.
So know that on the level of my existence
A new being breathes all beings.
They become different from what they were before.
What only had natural being,
Receives moral inner being.
A natural event that previously only
occupied knowledge now becomes
Revealer of human guilt and
divine destiny. And a person
who previously only acted as this or
that character, only showed himself to be foolish or
wise, becomes the moral
power of one's own self. It transforms
one in such a way that we feel in him:
you must make him happy if you want to
remove this or that obstacle from your path
another imposes something else on us
. So I have long had to feel
when Capesius
appears before me, yes, even when
the thought of him comes before my soul
I feel him as a reproach.
Just as I perceive seven colors in the rainbow
through the power of my outer eye, so
naturally, through the power of my
soul, the thought arises in me:
you have corrupted Capesius,
his fate is the consequence of your actions.
And his salvation is possible only through you alone.

JOHANNES:
And in what lies Capesius'
corruption?

MARY:
Just look at him.
He strives for the world
in which the power of the spirit
is revealed.
And instead of the mysteries of existence being revealed to him,
all his vitality is exhausted
in dark searching; he comes back
While pushing forward.
I still don't know why,
But it is clear to me:
I am the cause of his ruin.
The powers he lacks
Must have something to do
With my own striving.
How could I not recognize
That so much of what has become of me,
In my own soul's power
Cannot take root.
I see within myself constantly blossoming anew,
What with each passing day
I must see dying in Capesius.
It becomes easy for me to penetrate
The highest regions of the spirit's knowledge,
And what I call my own in physical life
As a tool,
Seems to work easily, as if it had no inhibitions.
But it seems to me
That the power I give myself
Cannot be given to me by another.
And when I stand before Capesius,
I feel a secret guilt.
I know one thing, feel another,
But how they are connected,
I am not given to know.
Yet a thought torments me,
Which from the teachings of the masters
Was always so clear to me.
It is often given to one,
What is taken from another.

JOHANNES:
It seems impossible to me
That Capesius' powers
In my idolized Maria
Live only in another form.
Despite everything I have learned,
Doubts about the harmony of the world
if I were to entertain such thoughts.

MARIA:
The harmony of the world would not be disturbed by this.
It is the course of life
that such things play out in the background,
and we must accept the great community
of human souls.
It could be a deep necessity
of existence,
that I receive such things,
as has been indicated.
But the necessity arose for me
to repay in another form
what I had received.
It could never dismay me
that I must take it.
But I have a strict duty
To repay what I have received.
And misfortune could only befall me
If I were unable to recognize
How I must repay my debt.
(She exits.)

JOHANNES:
As she says, so it is.
I feel it well.
But what a seed of unrest
is stirring in my soul.
A terrible thought
arises in my heart.
If it is as she says,
then she is simply
guilty, but I am doubly so.
For I owe her everything,
What I have become.
Third scene 1 First scene
If she is in Capesius' debt,
Then I am doubly so.
And even if I find the strength
To pay the debt,
It seems completely uncertain to me.